all that's left are your bones
by hyacinthian
Summary: Robin knows better than to think they'll ever know better. BarneyRobin, post-ep.


A/N: I had to write something after 8x08 and I've been working on this for a few days now and I still don't know what this is. So basically, I had an explosion of Robin feelings (can people stop blaming her for being self-consistent, thanks) and this happened. So spoilers through 8x08. Heard about what happened in 8x09, not touching it yet. Drabbles will be up soonish for anyone that cares (hopefully by New Years?). Leave feedback if you want to. Thanks for reading.

* * *

_iii)_

_A truth should exist,  
it should not be used  
like this. If I love you_

_is that a fact or a weapon?_

we are hard on each other, Margaret Atwood

* * *

There were bad times. That's what he doesn't seem to be able to remember.

When he would shout over her and leave, and slam doors and leave, and not look at her and leave, and she'd spend the evening in his empty kitchen drinking or throwing things or just hating him. It's been _fool me once, fool me twice, fool me three times_, and she isn't sure how many times she can call shame anymore.

_It'll be different. _

_We know better._

Robin knows better than to think they'll ever know better.

* * *

A man walks into a bar and looks for something he thought he lost. A man walks into a bar and looks. A man walks into a bar.

She looks down: "Why do you even like me?"

The answer: he's always been in love with his own reflection.

(And maybe looking into the mirror isn't the same as looking back, but Robin's familiar with the story – everything turns you into salt sometime. And she isn't going to be caught in his trap. Not when he's already turning into dust before her eyes; not when he's lining the rim of her glass. She isn't ready. She's never been ready.

She looks into his eyes, and his gaze falls on the slope of her neck, lingers on her pulse point, and tracks down to her collarbone; she looks into his eyes and his eyes trace the beat of her heart through the skin of her neck; she looks into his eyes and remembers how fragile throats can be. Her heart beats and she remembers how fragile.

Her heart.)

And in resurrecting the beast a second time, a third: he lays his hands flat on the uneven wood grain of the table and her thumb finds the knot in the side, and he doesn't meet her gaze. Instead there are speeches; words and words and words that don't mean anything more than he's leaving again, that he's tired of fragile, that he has set his heart somewhere and she has forgotten to remember where he placed it; he has set his heart somewhere, and she was responsible for it without knowing.

Her heart beats, and she feels the tremor in her throat before she recognizes any of its multitude of meanings.

He says he's done. This is somehow her fault.

* * *

It's the way ghost stories always go: transparent women floating through corridors with lost loves and tragic histories and missing heads or missing hearts.

They aren't all so loud.

Robin's floated from one thing to another and pretended to be whatever she needed to be, and she's tired. Love isn't supposed to feel this heavy; it isn't supposed to cling to the skin and suffocate her. Somewhere, a book says that it's meant to set you free. Somewhere, a book says that love is the thing that starts and creates, that holds you up when you can't bear to hold yourself up.

The only thing that holds Robin up anymore are her own bones, and she already knows the lightness of those, the easy ways they fracture, the ways they wear gaps like soldiers wear shrapnel.

It's a question of remembrance. There's only so many times she can call up this idea of Robin Scherbatsky who seems to be real for everyone else before the fabric wears thin and everything falls apart. She's too old for this. Even Penelope had her limits. Pulling apart the thing you're building can only get you so far.

He says that he's done; he says that he's tired.

She reaches for her drink and swallows the laugh hiding deep in her ribs. (The problem with falling in love with your own reflection is that one day you drown in it.)

* * *

It's an early winter in Manhattan, and she doesn't spend time with him anymore. Not alone. Not for a few weeks.

In the group, there's suddenly new questions of the booth and how it works. There is his space and her space, and the lines of those boxes, and the box for their history and the box for all the times she walked away and the box for all the times he's walked away, and then there are the boxes she has for Ted, and Ted's boxes for her and for Victoria, and the seats are too cluttered with everyone's unspoken thoughts about each other that she doesn't quite know where to sit.

So she finds a spot at the bar.

Lily finds her there, her woolen cap sliding off her head, looking every bit as tired as she did when Marvin first came home. "What's doing, girlfriend?"

Robin smiles. "Want a drink?"

"Nah. Marshall and I got to get back and fall asleep the minute we get through the door," Lily says with a small laugh. "What's going on with you and –"

"Nothing."

And for once, that's the truth. She smiles, and Lily tucks her chin against her collarbone, lips turned down at the corners, and Robin knows she's trying not to be concerned. They've gone one or two rounds too, her and Lily. "You sure?"

Robin nods. "Sure."

There's no question about it.

There's a time for fucking up and figuring shit out, and there's a time to get drunk all the time and fuck as many people as possible, and there's supposed to be a time when you get your shit together. Fuck ups, everyone knows, automatically grow responsible at thirty. And when she turns thirty-one, she wakes up in her bed to a nice sixty-five degrees in her apartment, and just as she goes to switch on the coffeemaker, it hits her.

They were never going to last.

(And she is too old for anything that isn't built to last. Not shitty cars, or shitty kitchen appliances, or fix-up apartments. Even notebooks that fall apart in her purse.)

And she's done with trying to make things work when they refuse to. Done with short-term singing careers, flashes in the pan, and boyfriends that tell you they'll love you their whole lives right before they cheat (on you, with their job, always); she's done with the short panting breaths that cling to friends-with-benefits, and labeling things only to have them disappear; parents that don't stay, and the short tempers of the parents that do. It's exhausting. And she's older now.

This is not how it works. He doesn't get to kiss her in the street and pretend that everything's okay; he doesn't get to pretend that this is a new beginning, or an old beginning dressed up in new clothes, or that they're any better off than they were however long ago it was that this fucking fell apart _the first time_. There've been casualties. Nora, and Quinn, and other bodies that she hasn't decided to blame on them yet. It's funny the first time, maybe, but by the thirtieth? It becomes _you should know better_ and _look before you leap _and _fool me once_ – the handy proverbs that advice columnists and Patrice keep up their sleeves in case she's having another minor breakdown this week.

It isn't her fault. None of it is.

* * *

They get really drunk one Saturday, staying too late at the bar after Ted and Marshall and Lily have all gone home. The bar gets emptier and emptier until it's the two of them, pressed against the corner of the bar, nursing their drinks.

"I'm going to try and catch a cab," she says.

And he presses his lips together. "I'll go with you."

It's outside that everything explodes. She finds herself looking at his mouth for too long, and he catches the cuff of her sleeve, and they try to talk except everything comes out as yelling. Oh, yes, this, she doesn't miss. He's trying not to look bitter but he keeps clenching his jaw and it's too cold to fucking stand outside and talk about this right now and _for god's sake, Barney, _she was never just going to be a match that he could strike and get what he wanted.

He squints at her. "That doesn't make any sense."

"You can't just give me a speech in a booth and think that's going to change things."

There's a loud screech of honking taxis and drunk pedestrians, and she keeps rubbing her hands together to keep them warm, but it's impossible to focus. "What am I supposed to do?" he says. "We keep trying and trying, and every time I try to tell you my feelings, you run away."

She laughs. "I'm not the only person who walked away from this, you know."

"So it's my fault?"

"Yes!" she shouts. Then, quieter: "No. Maybe. I don't know."

They keep having the same conversations. "How are we supposed to do this?" he says. "I can't keep doing _this_."

Pronouns are tricky that way. They've been using a catch-all for so long that she's forgotten what it's become a placeholder for. She laughs, and it starts to snow. "I can't either," she says. "But we're _friends_. We _were _friends. You can't just put an ultimatum in my face and walk away. It doesn't work like that."

Patting his jacket pocket, he fishes out a carton of cigarettes. "Well, we aren't _just _friends anymore."

She takes a cigarette from between his fingers, and waits for him to take the lighter out of his pocket. "So what are we supposed to do?"

A piece of snow lands on the apple of his cheek. "Learn from our mistakes?"

The lighter clicks, and her laugh is nothing but smoke in the air.

* * *

Lily asks: "What are you guys doing?"

She's been asked that question before by the same asker; she still doesn't have an answer.

"I don't know," she says, and Marvin cries from the crib.

"Aren't you guys a little too old for this? You know you love each other, right?" Robin lets a long pause rest on the air. "You _do_." Lily's gotten a little insufferable with the air of maternal knowledge resting on her shoulders. Robin shrugs.

"Maybe."

Lily snorts. "Fu—fig, Robin, I'm not the best at this, and even I know that you guys are fooling yourselves."

* * *

In the spring thaw, she forgets her rule. He finds his way back to her bed, and they both pretend that this is going to remain a standalone event. (It might. Robin hears that's how regular people measure progress; she's just learned to not expect the impossible from herself. Her therapist says to set realistic goals.)

The list of sins grows greater -

She forgets the weight of his body. The way the mattress always dips beneath it. The jut of his elbow, the scar around the side of his knee, the smooth plane of his back.

They fuck.

Her nails dig into his shoulderblade and his ankle knocks against the post of her bed and she laughs against his shoulder. His lips are dry, and they kiss and kiss like they've forgotten the curve of each other's mouths, and she tries really hard to avoid saying his name.

It's the same as it ever was.

But it isn't like before: the sex is still somehow about sex, and not about the complex web of things they refuse to discuss; all the ways in which their bodies touch no longer stands in for conversation about who sleeps where and how long they can pretend this is a thing that will last; the way her hair falls across his chest when she falls asleep against him does not mean that she wants to stay.

He lies there for a half an hour, and then comes the routine reassembling. His clothes come off the floor, slightly more rumpled than when they were first tossed there; he fixes his hair in the bathroom; he takes a piss; he calls for a car. She watches him, alternately pointing and flexing her feet under the cover for want of something to do.

There are promises, and intentions, and the weight of something heavy in the air they refuse to acknowledge. She's memorized the steps.

He says, "Things are back to normal?"

"As normal for us as they can get, I guess."

His driver buzzes her apartment. She slips out from underneath the cover, and toes naked to the door. His eyes linger on the curve of her hip.

"Friends," he says.

"Bye."

He slips out and she locks the door behind him and it takes her another twenty minutes to realize that he's left his necktie – silk, of course – lying against the bedframe. Accident or mistake, she hasn't quite decided.

* * *

It isn't a question of just saying that she loves him.

He knows that. They've done that. (If confused, please check the history.) Jumped over rooftops, stood in the rain, kissed and fucked and fought, cheated on other people, exploded, self-destructed, etc. etc. There's only so many times they can destroy other people – other things – before they turn around and destroy themselves, and she's not ready to let any of that happen again.

There is too much of her to break this time around. And she still hasn't finished collecting herself from their last go. She's nothing but mosaic with missing pieces.

Maybe it isn't easy for him. Maybe it was never easy for him. But it's been a hell of a lot easier for him than it has been for her.

She refuses to look back.

* * *

They fall into familiar patterns – she calls him and they talk, they don't talk, and somehow every two weeks, she finds him stumbling over to her apartment and amassing a number of hours in her bed. It's different this time – her apartment, not his – and there's little things about him that change just with the location.

He's quieter. Walking around with bare feet, speaking in low tones. Everything about his apartment is so loud – chrome and silver, hydraulic secret-passage bookshelves, overpriced Kitchenaid appliances. And in hers, there's less of the pretension and more of whatever she'd like to be – issues of _The Economist _lying around with her (actually cracked) beach reads, the TV that she never watches and continues to pay for, DVDS, hockey jerseys, hockey memorabilia, playbills and old take-out receipts.

She's cleaner than she used to be, but some days, there's a touch of her old messiness lingering in the corners of her living room.

He never goes rifling through her drawers (that she can tell, anyway).

They don't talk about trust.

* * *

It's supposed to be her year of change. Her decade of change.

She keeps tiny lists on the backs of Duane Reade receipts that are supposed to hold her achievable goals for the near future. Things like making sure she throws out the old food in her fridge and cleaning more often and making sure she actually tries to budget and in the retiree-keeping-a-spreadsheet kind of way. And her personal goals? Figuring out her feelings.

Trying to figure out when it's worth it to get involved and when it isn't. (Too long to fit on a stupid list she writes when she's on the train, but you get the idea.)

So when he shows up at her apartment door with a six-pack of beer and a bottle of scotch to replace the ones they drank the last time he was here, and he starts talking about nothing, and just casually crosses over into her kitchen – none of this is supposed to happen because Robin's supposed to have become _diligent _and _responsible _about being the kind of person she wants to be - and instead, he's stepping into her space and his body is warm and smells like the kind of fancy soap whose name she probably can't pronounce, and she slips an arm underneath his to press a hand against his back.

His mouth brushes the crown of her hair.

She shudders.

* * *

Summer creeps in with soft slow footsteps until the humidity's making everything stick to her skin and she remembers just how long she's wasted lying in bed on her never-used personal days. (_You could come home to visit!_, her mother says, _And see Katie?_

She and Katie Skype. It takes a lot of weighing the pros and cons to figure out if it's worth a trip back home.)

And the weight around her ankle has only become an anchor. She wakes up and he's already made coffee, has the financial section of the Wall Street Journal splayed out on her counter and his secret ironing board tucked back into its hiding place. He doesn't say good morning. That's not how this works.

Her cup of coffee's right there though. Next to an everything bagel with cream cheese, and a slice of coffee cake. There's bright yellow light coming through the windows and girls with strapless dresses walking down the sidewalk, and his eyes are still fixed to the NASDAQ.

"Lily wants you to call her for brunch," he says, and there's a rustle as he turns the page.

She switches on the TV and the boring weekend cover anchor for NY1 is droning about football. "You didn't—"

"No," he says. "Read it on your phone by accident." At her brow raise, he adds, "It was a text, Scherbatsky, all right? Relax."

Her coffee's lukewarm. The light catches his hair.

* * *

"Is there a moment when I'm supposed to know whether or not it's all worth it?"

Ted leans back against his chair, shrugging. "You know or you don't."

"God, Ted, that's such a stupid answer."

He folds his hands and whistles. "I don't make the rules, kid." Sometimes Robin thinks Ted needs to start having kids before everyone starts finding out he's like that _all _the time.

* * *

It doesn't come down to a single choice. It's one of those stupid moments that sneaks up on you – that's how she processes the world these days, in large overdramatic revelations (like crying on the subway, cheating on her boyfriend, etc. etc.) – and Wednesday, it starts pouring before she leaves for work and there's a newspaper he's left on the seat of one of her chairs and she can't help seeing him.

Haunting the corner of her kitchen and making coffee and the two of them talking, not talking. They aren't what everyone else wants them to be, but – she doesn't know what they are. His newspaper is on the seat of a chair and some of her cheap make-up is still at his apartment and he's been spending nights here and they haven't talked about it – can't even call it a name, for god's sake – and it shouldn't be up to her.

This isn't just her life; it shouldn't just be her decision.

She takes a day off, and calls him. "I'm not making a choice."

His voice is tired on the line: "What do you mean you're not making a choice? What are you talking about?"

"You don't get to force me to make a choice. If you want this, then you need to decide whether or not you still want it. And if not, then fine."

He exhales loudly. "Just give me ten minutes, and I'll meet you at your apartment, all right?"

It isn't the end scene to any of Ted's favourite movies. Barney doesn't sprint through the storm; whiny acoustic rock doesn't start playing behind the scene. He shows up at her door and the hinge squeaks and she forgets to unlock the chain before she tries to open the door.

He kisses her first.

"This isn't why I asked you to come over," she says, and he presses her up against the wall.

"I know," he says. "But you chose me."

She laughs, teeth scraping the skin of his neck. "No, you did."

Shrugging out of his suit jacket, he kicks the front door closed. "Let's call it even."

"Lock the fucking door, would you?"

* * *

You know the ending –

She's standing in a room with a single mirror and a stupid dress on and her hands keep fidgeting with anything she can touch – her other hand, the ruched fabric at her hip, her hair, Ted's tie – and there's a nagging voice in her head that reminds her that this could go wrong, this could go off the rails, this could be another few years of something slowly collapsing under its own weight.

"Just – I need some air, Ted, all right?"

Ted raises his hands and heads out into the hallway. "I'm going to go look for Marshall."

She heads to the back porch with the last few cigarettes in her pack. He laughs when he sees her.

The porch is old, all peeling paint and cement steps that scrape against her ankle and beautiful views. "Didn't expect to see you here," she says.

"You either."

There's the soft hiss of the match striking against the book, and then there's just this. Her last cigarette. The last bits of sunlight disappearing behind a cloud.

"You're going to make us both smell like smoke."

"Oh, don't pretend like you don't like it."

He curls his fingers around her wrist. "Are you sure you want to go through with this?"

"Do you?"

"I asked you first."

"Yeah, but I'm the _bride_." She wrinkles her nose, and he has another soft laugh. Everything sounds so abbreviated. Abrupt. Even here, even now, when she's relatively sure that this is what she wants. (The point was to make her make a choice, and she finally did:

Choosing Robin Scherbatsky in one way is like choosing Barney Stinson in another, and maybe she'll drown in her own reflection and maybe she won't, but choosing herself means choosing her own weaknesses, doesn't it?

She ought to stop thinking about it as a weakness, her therapist says, but Robin knows that Barney'd probably agree with her. Hopefully.)

"This?" he says, waving towards the door behind them. "I don't know. But _this_?" His hand gestures at the space between them; there isn't an answer.

"Yeah," she says. "I don't know if I was cut out for this whole thing. This Ted and Marshall and Lily thing. Maybe I just keep hoping that I'm going to wake up and be an adult and realize that this is what I wanted the whole time."

"Are you scared?"

She flicks the ashes off the end into the grass. "I don't get scared."

"Oh, right. Forgot."

He taps his shoe against the edge of the step. "Want to run away together?"

She licks her lips. The sun is setting. She's nearly thirty-five. "Sure."

* * *

(They skip the wedding. Not the reception.

Marriage is for people who don't expect the ceiling to cave in; they're ready for the sky to fall.)


End file.
